It thus is clear that merely stating that matter is passivity in the monad is not the ultimate way of stating its nature. For passivity means in reality nothing but confused representations,--representations, that is, whose significance is not perceived. The true significance of every representation is found in its relation to the ego, or pure self-activity, which, through its dependent relation upon God, the absolute self-activity and ego, produces the representation from its own ideal being. So far as the soul does not have distinct recognition of relation of all representations to self, it feels them as coming from without; as foreign to spirit; in short, as matter. Leibniz thus employs exactly the same language about confused ideas that he does about passivity, or matter. It is not possible that the monad should have distinct consciousness of itself as a mirror of the whole universe, he says, "for in that case every entelechy would be God." Again, "the soul would be God if it could enter at once and with distinctness into everything occurring within it." But it is necessary "that we should have passions which consist in confused ideas, in which there is something involuntary and unknown, and which represent the body and constitute our imperfection." Again, he speaks of matter as "the _mixture_ (_mélange_) of the effects of the infinite environing us." In that expression is summed up his whole theory of matter. It is a mixture; it is, that is to say, confused, aggregated, irresolvable into simple ideas. But it is a mixture of "effects of the infinite about us;" that is, it takes its rise in the true, the real, the spiritual. It only fails to represent this as it actually is. Matter, in short, is a phenomenon dependent upon inability to realize the entire spiritual character of reality. It is spirit apprehended in a confused, hesitating, and passive manner.